Evangelical Catholicity

Eric Hageman on a Name Change for the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod

In the October 2018 issue of First Things, Robert Benne detailed the ongoing collapse of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), by far the largest American Lutheran body. Among other things, Benne described a demonic mockery of baptismal vows ("Do you renounce the lie that Queerness is anything other than beauty?"), a church-sanctioned renaming ceremony for a gender-dysphoric child, and the eschewing of evangelical work to combat white colonialism. More recently, in February, The New Yorker profiled Nadia Bolz-Weber, an ELCA pastor who bragged about divorcing her husband of twenty years (and father of her two children) in search of better sex.

These developments are by no means unusual among Lutheran bodies. Like the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland endorses legalized abortion. At least sixteen bodies of the Lutheran World Federation—representing well over half of its 74 million members—condone "same-sex marriage."

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